Fishing for a business/fashion trend

Through I do envy the ability of bulimics whenever I see that Lady GaGa thing.

All that aside, the struggle of hermits everywhere against popular culture must be raging as a current trend in hair fashion is hitting fly fishers where it annoys them most, the wallet.

Feathers. Brightly colored, long, skinny rooster feathers that fly fishers have been using for eons to take on trout, steelhead and bass populations have suddenly become the it accessory for the heads of the “beautiful people” crowd.

The trend is causing a shortage of the feathers and costs are beginning to soar.

The big winners for this trend are angler stores and salons. The loser would be the roosters who provide the feathers. This AP video notes that the chickens rarely survive the plucking process.

And the grand master champion of all this hullabaloo would be Steven Tyler, who is credited in this story as the one who began the fashion trend.

You know, I think the best summation of fashion comes from cranky old Henry David Thoreau when he wrote, “The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”